Well, for a while I have had a piece of wire money that was labeled as Peter the Great. I was happy with the purchase, but upon further inspection and research I became troubled about what it really was. Out of all images of Peter’s wire money I’d seen, none of them matched the fragments of my legend, no name was visible, and there was no date on the front due to its centering, so I just decided to call it a contemporary counterfeit (crazy thought that people would even bother) and call it a day. Roughly a couple of months later (i. e. today) I found a great site that listed all different types of wire money, with drawings of the legends! I started at Fyodor I and kept up all the way to Peter, attributing my Michael (1613-1617, Moscow) along the way. I get to around 1709 and I was extremely happy to finally find a type like it, and went on until the end, in 1717 (Wow, wire money was used from 1300s to 1717!). The placing on one of the characters on the reverse was fortunate enough to rule out any other types except for two: 1711 and 1716. Then, I had to see whether the obverse would help. As luck would have it, it was in just the right placement to tell what year it was by how the horse’s right foreleg was oriented. Thus, here is my 1711 AR kopek of Peter I. And if anyone wants to post their wire money, go right on ahead! The site I used to attribute it is silver-copeck.ru
The thrill of the hunt! Sometimes for history of the coin you already have! A neat coin with a great writeup and an excellent resource. Thanks for sharing this!
